Counsellor confidentiality

[Cobblersandhogwash]

Our ds1 (aged 13 1/2) is seeing a counsellor every week.

I have asked the counsellor if he wants to know what's happened in our home in the week.

He says no. He wants to hear it from ds1. Except ds1 will in no way tell him what's happened in the week.

Ds1 is hostile, aggressive and dishonest. He will kick and upset furniture, trash his room and steal stuff if he doesn't get what he wants.

Should I be giving the counsellor the full background every week or is it normal to just let them crack on in confidence?

My dh is a counsellor and has worked with young people in the past. That sounds standard practice to me. He also shouldn’t tell you anything that has been spoken about in the session unless ds agrees or there is a serious risk of harm to himself or others.

I hope he manages to give your ds the support and help he needs.

You should be staying well out of it. Any kind of therapy is confidential, that's why it works. You have no idea what he says or doesn't say. Its' standard practice to want to hear it from your DS, he needs his point of view, unbiased by yours.

No, you shouldn’t interfere. The entire point of counselling is that it comes entirely from the client.

This also means you shouldn’t know what’s gone on in these sessions or what they talk about.

When dd2 had counselling at the same age I told her it was up to her what she told me afterwards. She told me some, but not all.

I do get where you are coming from though. She can do a very good "woe is me" story with no more than a grain of truth especially with a captive audience.

Counsellor is right, the space is for your DS to bring what he wants regardless of what that is.
It is not for you to direct, control or dictate the session.

I'm not looking to control the session.

I was just wondering if say, he trashes his room or punches me in the head, or destroys someone else's properties at school, the counsellor should be aware of his behaviour.

Counselling is extremely confidential, you cannot discuss your son with his counsellor.

It takes a long time, things come out bit by bit and clients find out so much about themselves but it's not going to happen in a few weeks.

I do understand how you feel, I'm sure most of us sympathise. However I'm sure there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Be as gentle and patient as you can.

I should imagine your son would feel very betrayed if you snitched on him to the therapist.

was just wondering if say, he trashes his room or punches me in the head, or destroys someone else's properties at school, the counsellor should be aware of his behaviour.

What would you want the counsellor to do with that information though? Your sons take on his behaviour will be different to yours and that’s what the counsellor needs to work with, or your son may struggle to talk about his behaviour for very good reason. Part of the process is him being able to talk about the things that are important to him, which won’t necessarily be the things that are important to you.

If there are things that are important to you that you feel need to be addressed in counselling it might be worth looking at family therapy. Getting in the middle of his counselling though (which you would be if you told the counsellor things that he isn’t ready/able to talk about) would be counterproductive in the extreme.

What the counsellor is not doing, is taking sides. And they're not there to tell your son he's wrong for his actions.

He's there to help your son process his emotions and help learn ongoing strategies. So in a sense, it doesn't matter if your son has punched you in the head but doesn't tell the counsellor. Because you want the counsellor to know how bad your son has been. But what the counsellor would like is to hear what is important to your son that week - but it doesn't have to be something that has happened in the past 7 days. It could be from 7 years ago, or 2 weeks ago etc.

It's a long process, the counselling sessions are not updates.

@PoliticalBiscuit I don't want the counsellor to know how bad my ds has been. Thanks for your diagnosis though. 🙄

What I would like is for the counsellor to understand the level of violence that my ds has reached in our home.

My concern is, as with the last two counsellors he has seen, that after six weeks, he will say there no need for more sessions. That he is perfectly fine and we can just carry on.

Do you mean the counsellor will say in six weeks your son is fine, or your son will say it?

I dont think the counsellor is the right person to deal with the issues you have here tbh.

What is your son seeing the counsellor for and what are you hoping the benefit of counselling will be?

Your desire to be involved is indicative of a parent who wont give their child privacy, I had this it was awful. And the cause of my behaviour

Do you think counsellors don’t know that they aren’t always given a full and accurate picture from their clients?

Stay out of it.

Have you considered counselling for yourself?

I'm a therapist and work often with children and young people. I welcome support and extra information from parents, particularly if there has been behaviour such as you mention. It's relevant, important information and until the child is an adult, parents need to be involved and working on the family dynamic is usually essential to help the situation. I involve parents with the therapy, as well as working one to one with kids.

I've also been on the other side of this and it helps sometimes to have a complete picture.

I don't divulge anything the child tells me, to be clear, but extra information the other way helps to paint a clearer picture of where the child is at.

I think though that depends on your therapeutic model, I work with young people and wouldn’t welcome information from parents unless the young person had asked for help in sharing something difficult or there were safety concerns, in which case we’d be looking at referral to a statutory agency.

The danger is that the child sees the parent and the counsellor as allies rather than the counsellor being someone independent. It’s very easy to be drawn into a family dynamic that already isn’t working for the young person. At 13 the young person is old enough to decide how they want to use their time with a counsellor.

If your son isn’t willing or able to discuss that in counselling and the counsellor feels that no more counselling is necessary then I’d say your son isn’t ready for counselling on that issue.

It sounds incredibly distressing. Have you heard of the book The Explosive Child? I’d recommend that and also counselling for yourself.

I welcome support and extra information from parents, particularly if there has been behaviour such as you mention

Dc therapist was similar - thank goodness- I think I contacted them 3 times over a year or so when there had been a crisis. The therapist was great about it- and good with me.

It sounds extremely difficult op 💐 are the counsellors through cahms or are you paying?

It's really difficult but I think if your son is telling the counsellor he's fine and doesn't need to come anymore then he's not ready to engage with the process and you're just wasting your money. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink, this is true of Counselling and whenever I have a client who's been 'sent' it rarely works too well.

I don't work with under 16's personally but I have worked with a few clients with very 'invested' parents, they always seem to think it's really important I know xyz about what they've done that week etc, I got the feeling the subtext was '...what are you going to do about him/her?'

I found Ds1 having counselling the most frustrating thing. He didn't want to tell the counsellor what was going on. I felt powerless. I felt the counselling was almost pointless.

Unfortunately I'm not sure there is much you can do. Sit and talk to ds about being honest, so he gets the most out of the sessions?

I don't even know what else can be done?

If you want your son to trust the counsellor you shouldn’t say anything.

it drink, this is true of Counselling and whenever I have a client who's been 'sent' it rarely works too well.

This is my experience too.